by Pierce Burns (Gap Creek Press, 2010)
ISBN 9780615424866
A Few Good Horses
Synopsis:
West Texas is scattered with abandoned ranch houses and ghost towns. The people who live there and their life stories are fading--blowing away with the wind as buildings collapse and Western heroes die. A Few Good Horses is a gritty account of early ranch life Texas from 1849 through 1935 as seen through the eyes of a fourth generation Burns boy. Simon Pierce Burns begins to secure his place in Brown County Texas history when he runs away from a troubled Ohio home in 1847. His sons, Simon Pierce Jr. and William Nelson, build a large Texas cattle ranch over a span of forty years. The author’s father, George Pierce Burns, quits his coaching job in the summer of 1929, starts a family, and begins ranching with his father and uncle.
The family's dreams change into a desperate struggle for survival with the onset of The Great Depression in Texas. Some family members are defeated by it, but others add their names to a lineage of heroes in Texas ranching history. 
